Intensified Bodies from the Performing Arts in Portugal

The way the body is considered and explored in the performing arts has assumed a growing importance, introducing new questions and cross-cutting perspectives on our understanding of the political, sociological and philosophical relevance of the body today. This book is a meeting point for these questions, bringing together a set of contributors experienced in examining the body’s presence in live performances. It interweaves several disciplinary outlooks, addressing current theoretical debates on the body relating to the theory of affects, ethics, gender, age, discourse and representation. Looking at recent practice in Portugal, the volume examines several cases where the body and issues of corporeality raise questions of memory, identity, experience and existence. It opens a rare window onto the distinctive Portuguese post-colonial legacy, which has given rise to an intensified search for new forms of bodily affirmation in the world. In so doing, the book conjures up the transformative power of performing arts today: from body into Being.

Table of Contents:
CONTENTS: José Gil: Foreword – Gustavo Vicente: Introduction: The urge to embody the world – Ana Pais: Affective rhythms in Until the Moment When God is Destroyed by the Extreme Exercise of Beauty by Vera Mantero – Fernando Machado Silva: New notes towards a supreme fiction: Experience, experimentation and the Body for Life – Né Barros: Body and discourse: Incalculable choreographies – Gonçalo M. Tavares: Body, performance, language and tradition: The example of Pina Bausch and Clara Andermatt’s Fica no Singelo – Daniel Tércio: The body in descent: Catastrophes, feelings and choreographies in the Portuguese landscape – Maria José Fazenda: Creating and performing in Companhia Maior: Memories of life, experiences of continuity and transformation – Anabela Pereira: Self-representation as a performative act of the body: Absence-presence disruptions and aporias in the works of Helena Almeida and Jorge Molder – Maria João Brilhante: Looking for the expressive body through images: The infinite struggle against insignificance.

About the Author :
Gustavo Vicente is a scholar, performer and artistic director. He is Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Lisbon and a researcher at the Centro de Estudos de Teatro [Centre for Theatre Studies]. Current co-convener of the Choreography and Corporeality Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research, he is also a member of the editorial board of Sinais de Cena: Performing Arts and Theatre Studies Journal. He began his career as an actor in 2001, gaining wide experience both in theatre and cinema, before going on to win first prize at the Portuguese Academic Theatre Festival with his first project as an artistic director, in 2009.

Review :
«The singularity of Portuguese performance and dance has been one of the significant forces in much of experimental live art in Europe over the past two decades. This volume, gathering original essays by an impressive array of Portugal’s most distinguished theorists in aesthetics, philosophy of art and performance theory, offers to the specialist and to the public at large not only an in-depth survey of that experimental force, but also demonstrates with remarkable success its influence in the formation of a truly experimental, powerfully singular and theoretically daring discourse on live performance.» — André Lepecki, Professor and Chair, Department of Performance Studies, New York University «This exciting collection creates a series of new collaborations between thought and performance, activating key corporeal concepts in the context of Portuguese performing arts past and present.» — Philipa Rothfield, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Politics and Philosophy, La Trobe University